Yuri Voronezhcev: Show people the video of the accident at the Belarusian NPP

The state should act as follows: construction stops, public committee assembles, studies the incident, publishes a report, after which decides what to do with the nuclear power plant in future.

On July 25 there appeared information about another incident at the Belarusian NPP: during the installation the enclosure of the future reactor fell from the height of 2 – 4 meters at the construction site of the Belarusian nuclear power plant in Astravets (Hrodna region).

The Ministry of Energy has admitted that a contingency occurred at the building site of the Belarusian NPP. "According to the prime contractor Atombudexpart, the contingency occurred when the reactor was being moved horizontally,” claimed the Ministry of Energy.

Belarus has demanded ‘all the necessary documents and information’ from the prime contractor. The prime contractor (group of companies ASE) had announced that the information about the contingency was not true a few hours before the Ministry of Energy commented on it.

On Thursday Lithuania’s government handed a note to the Belarusian Embassy over the incident. Vilnius also asked Brussels for involvement of the European Union in the matter.

Physicist, Candidate of Technical Sciences, executive secretary of the Commission of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to address the causes of the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and assess the actions of officials in the post-accident period Yuri Voronezhcev in an interview with the “EuroBelarus” Information Service commented upon the situation.

- "Atombudexpart" said that it was just the "paint that has worn off" from the body of the reactor. Can we judge about the nature of the emergency and the seriousness of the damage caused to the reactor according to official reports?

- According to this comment, "Atombudexpart" treats its clients as complete idiots. It is not the paint that the reactor is covered with, but a special multi-layer thick covering that is corrosion-resistant and resistant to radiation. If the paint has really worn off, you can just imagine the impact on the body of the reactor, which led to this.

- The same comment claims that Moscow has immediately summoned the staff, which determined roughly that the situation is nothing but regular and bears no threat. Can such things be determined at a distance?

- Of course not! It’s deja vu: in due time we will investigate both the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Chernobyl catastrophe, and its consequences – it all repeats. People are taken for idiots and are given absolutely absurd information. Remember what the authorities were saying after the accident in Chernobyl? There was a fire in the reactor – it had already been eliminated. One thing after another.

I don’t know what really happened at the construction site of the Belarusian nuclear power plant; and you do not know, and 99,999 percent of the Belarusian citizens do not know that either. Although according to the Constitution, they have the right to know what has happened and what are the possible consequences.

- Rumors say that the official Minsk has no control over the construction of the nuclear power plant: since they turned to the general contractor for clarifications, they probably don’t know anything. How is this possible?

- Personally, I think that this is absolutely impossible. If the situation is really like that, then the government should immediately resign. It’s ridiculous that the country, which has suffered from an explosion at a similar plant, where all cancer clinics are overcrowded, is building the nuclear power plant and doesn’t know what’s going on at the construction site!

Belarusian authorities know exactly what happened; it’s just that the authorities are treating citizens as suckers.

- What should the administration of the Belarusian NPP, Belarusian authorities and the general contractor do now, after the state of emergency has already happened?

- Firstly, they must clearly inform their citizens of what actually happened and what are the consequences of this state of emergency.

Secondly, an independent commission should be created, which should include only one representative of a contractor and only one representative of the authorities, while all the rest should present absolutely independent experts, including international ones. The Commission should examine the situation on the ground, examine all the documents, watch all the video filming that is conducted on site, examine all the records of various services.

And the construction of the Belarusian NPP should be discontinued until the report of the public commission is published in the media. And it is only after the report is published that we need to decide what to do next, up to stopping the construction of the nuclear power plant, as the Russians did with the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, if something serious happened to the body of the reactor.